Gauguin: Historical Sales

From 1883, when he stopped working as a stockbroker, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) lived by his wits for a long while, relying on financial support from friends like Émile Schuffenecker. But when he was seized with a strange desire to go to Tahiti, he had to find the means to do so. This dream was inspired by reading a tourist magazine after his return from Brittany in the winter of 1889, when he spent his time with his Symbolist friends in smoke-wreathed cafés, endlessly drinking bad cognac and sleeping in little hotels. In his biography published three years after Gauguin's death, Jean de Rotonchamp wrote that "he had high hopes of selling the pictures piled up in his studio, as well as ones he was planning to paint – but these hopes were dashed." However, he managed to make several sales through his dealer, Theo Van Gogh. In 1889, he staged an exhibition of the "Impressionist and Synthetist group" on the fringe of the Universal Exhibition, at the Café des Arts on the Champ-de-Mars, with eight artists including Schuffenecker, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin. But the show apparently led to no sales. To pay for his journey, continues his first biographer, "he picked out some thirty paintings dating from the last few years – mainly size…